大学英语综合教程四 Unit 1至Unit 8 课文内容英译中 中英翻译

大学英语综合教程四 Unit 1至Unit 8 课文内容英译中 中英翻译

 

  大家好，我叫亓官劼（qí guān jié ），在CSDN中记录学习的点滴历程，时光荏苒，未来可期，加油~博客地址为：亓官劼的博客

本文原创为亓官劼，请大家支持原创，部分平台一直在盗取博主的文章！！！

博主目前仅在CSDN中写博客，唯一博客更新的地址为：亓官劼的博客

文本为博主整理翻译所得，送给有需要的小伙伴，还有综合教程一到4的课文文本翻译，后续陆续整理更新，都是之前学习时使用的一些资料，最近在整理电脑时发现的。

如果有需要可以收藏，全部更新完之后，会在本文内加入各个单元翻译的链接

大学英语 综合教程 一到四 课文文章翻译 英译中 所有文章的目录导航为：大学英语 综合教程 一到四 课文文章翻译 英译中 目录导航  

导航的博客地址为：https://blog.csdn.net/qq_43422111/article/details/105754423 有需要有去查看

 

Book IV Unit 1 The Icy Defender

冰雪卫士

Nila B. Smith

 

1     In 1812, Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of the French, led his Grand Army into Russia. He was prepared for the fierce resistance of the Russian people defending their homeland. He was prepared for the long march across Russian soil to Moscow, the capital city. But he was not prepared for the devastating enemy that met him in Moscow -- the raw, bitter, bleak Russian winter.

      1812年，法国皇帝拿破仑·波拿巴率大军入侵俄罗斯。他准备好俄罗斯人民会为保卫祖国而奋勇抵抗。他准备好在俄罗斯广袤的国土上要经过长途跋涉才能进军首都莫斯科。但他没有料到在莫斯科他会遭遇劲敌—俄罗斯阴冷凄苦的寒冬。

2    In 1941, Adolf Hitler, leader of Nazi Germany, launched an attack against the Soviet Union, as Russia then was called. Hitler's military might was unequaled. His war machine had mowed down resistance in most of Europe. Hitler expected a short campaign but, like Napoleon before him, was taught a painful lesson. The Russian winter again came to the aid of the Soviet soldiers.

      1941年，纳粹德国元首阿道夫·希特勒进攻当时被称作苏联的俄罗斯。希特勒的军事实力堪称无敌。他的战争机器扫除了欧洲绝大部分地区的抵抗。希特勒希望速战速决，但是，就像在他之前的拿破仑一样，他得到的是痛苦的教训。仍是俄罗斯的冬天助了苏维埃士兵一臂之力。

Napoleon's Campaign拿破仑发起的战役

3    In the spring of 1812, Napoleon assembled an army of six hundred thousand men on the borders of Russia. The soldiers were well trained, efficient, and well equipped. This military force was called the Grand Army. Napoleon, confident of a quick victory, predicted the conquest of Russia in five weeks.

      1812年春，拿破仑在俄国边境屯兵60万。这些士兵受过良好训练，作战力强，装备精良。这支军队被称为大军。拿破仑对马到成功充满自信，预言要在5个星期内攻下俄国。

4    Shortly afterwards, Napoleon's army crossed the Neman River into Russia. The quick, decisive victory that Napoleon expected never happened. To his surprise, the Russians refused to stand and fight. Instead, they retreated eastward, burning their crops and homes as they went. The Grand Army followed, but its advance march soon became bogged down by slow-moving supply lines.

      不久，拿破仑的大军渡过涅曼河进入俄国。拿破仑期盼着的速决速胜迟迟没有发生。令他吃惊的是，俄国人并不奋起抵抗。相反，他们一路东撤，沿途焚毁庄稼和民居。大军紧追不舍，但它的长驱直入很快由于粮草运输缓慢而停顿下来。

5    In August, the French and Russian armies engaged at Smolensk, in a battle that left over ten thousand dead on each side. Yet, the Russians were again able to retreat farther into Russian territory. Napoleon had won no decisive victory. He was now faced with a crucial decision. Should he continue to pursue the Russian army? Or should he keep his army in Smolensk for the approaching winter?      

到了8月，法俄两军在斯摩棱斯克交战，这一战役中，双方各有上万人阵亡。可是，俄国人仍能在自己的国土上继续后撤。拿破仑未能取得决定性的胜利。此刻他面临着一个重要抉择。是继续追击俄国军队，还是把军队驻扎在斯摩棱斯克，在那儿度过将到的冬天？

6    Napoleon took the gamble of pressing on to Moscow, 448 kilometers away. On September 7, 1812, the French and Russian armies met in fierce battle at Borodino, 112 kilometers west of Moscow. By nightfall, thirty thousand French and forty-four thousand Russians lay dead or wounded on the battlefield.

拿破仑孤注一掷，决定向远在448公里之外的莫斯科进发。1812年9月7日，法俄两军在莫斯科以西112公里外的鲍罗季诺激战。夜幕降临时，3万名法国士兵以及4.4万名俄国士兵或伤或亡，倒在了战场上。

7    Again, the Russian army retreated to safety. Napoleon had a clear path to Moscow, but the occupation of the city became an empty victory. The Russians fled their capital. Soon after the French arrived, a raging fire destroyed two-thirds of the city. Napoleon offered a truce to Alexander I, but the Russian czar knew he could bide his time: "We shall let the Russian winter fight the war for us."

      俄国军队再次撤往安全之处。拿破仑顺利进入莫斯科，然而，对该市的占领成为毫无意义的胜利。俄国人弃城而走。法国人进城不久，一场熊熊大火烧毁了整个城市的三分之二。拿破仑向亚历山大一世提出停战，但沙皇深知他可以等待时机：“且让俄罗斯的严冬为我们战斗吧。”

8    Napoleon soon realized he could not feed, clothe, and quarter his army in Moscow during the winter. In October 1812, he ordered his Grand Army to retreat from Moscow.

      拿破仑很快意识到，他无法在冬天向远在莫斯科的军队供应粮草、提供御寒衣物和宿营之地。1812年10月，他命令大军撤出莫斯科。

9    The French retreat turned into a nightmare. From fields and forests, the Russians launched hit-and-run attacks on the French. A short distance from Moscow, the temperature had already dropped to minus 4 degrees Celsius. On November 3, the winter's first snow came. Exhausted horses fell dead in their tracks. Cannon became stuck in the snow. Equipment had to be burned for fuel. Soldiers took ill and froze to death. The French soldiers dragged on, leaving the dead along every mile.

      法军的撤离成为一场噩梦。俄国人出没于田野与森林，采用打了就跑的战术，向法国人发起攻击。刚出莫斯科城，气温就降到摄氏零下4度。11月3日降下初雪。困乏的马匹倒地而死。大炮陷入雪中。装备只得被用作燃料焚烧。士兵们染病冻死。法国士兵拖着脚步行进，一路上留下无数死尸。

10    As the Russian army was gathering its strength, the French had to flee Russia to avoid certain defeat. At the Berezina River, the Russians nearly trapped the retreating French by burning the bridges over the swollen river. But Napoleon, by a stroke of luck, was able to build two new bridges. Thousands of French soldiers escaped, but at the cost of fifty thousand dead. Once across the Berezina, the tattered survivors limped toward Vilna.

      正当俄罗斯军队集聚兵力之时，法国人却不得不逃离俄国，以避免注定的失败。在别列兹那河，俄国人焚烧了涨水的河道上的桥梁，差点将后撤的法军困于河边。侥幸的是，拿破仑居然突击造起两座桥。成千上万法国士兵得以逃脱，但却损失了5万人。渡过别列兹拿河，溃不成军的幸存者一瘸一拐地向维尔纽行进。

11    Of the six hundred thousand soldiers Napoleon had led into Russia, less than one hundred thousand came back. The weakened French army continued its retreat westward across Europe. Soon, Britain, Austria, Russia, and Prussia formed a powerful alliance and attacked these stragglers. In March 1814, Paris was captured. Napoleon abdicated and went into exile, his empire at an end.

      拿破仑发兵60万进入俄国，只有不到10万士兵返回。元气大伤的法国军队在欧洲继续西撤。不久，英国、奥地利、俄国以及普鲁士组成强大的联盟，攻击这些散兵游勇。1814年3月，巴黎被攻占。拿破仑退位去过流放生活，他缔造的帝国随之灭亡。

Hitler's Invasion希特勒的入侵

12    By early 1941, Adolf Hitler, leader of Nazi Germany, had seized control of most of Europe. To the east of Hitler's German empire was the Soviet Union. On June 22, 1941, without a declaration of war, Hitler began an invasion of the Soviet Union that was the largest military land campaign in history. Confident of a quick victory, Hitler expected the campaign to last no longer than three months. He planned to use the blitzkrieg, or "lightning war," tactics that had defeated the rest of Europe. The invasion had three broad thrusts: against Leningrad and Moscow and through the Ukraine.

      到1941年初，纳粹德国元首阿道夫·希特勒已经控制了欧洲大部分地区。希特勒的德意志帝国的东部与苏联毗邻。1941年6月22日，希特勒不宣而战，入侵苏联，发动了历史上规模最大的一场陆地战役。希特勒自信能速战速决，预计这一战役不会超过3个月。他计划采用征服了欧洲其余地区的闪电式战略。入侵计划包含三大目标：向列宁格勒与莫斯科进攻，并横扫乌克兰。

13    Caught off guard by the invasion, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin instructed the Russian people to "scorch the earth" in front of the German invaders. Farms and factories were burned, destroyed, or rendered useless. During the first ten weeks of the invasion, the Germans pushed the front eastward, and the Russians suffered more than a million casualties.

      苏联领导人约瑟夫·斯大林被打了个措手不及，他指示全国人民在德国入侵者到来之前实行“焦土”政策。农场和工厂被焚烧毁坏，或被弄得无法运转。在入侵的最初10个星期内，德国人一路东进，俄国人伤亡人数多达一百多万。

14    In the north, the Germans closed in on Leningrad. Despite great suffering, however, the people of Leningrad refused to surrender. As the battle of Leningrad dragged on into winter, the city's situation became desperate. As food ran out, people died from hunger and disease. By the middle of the winter of 1941-1942, nearly four thousand people starved to death every day. Close to one million people died as a result of the siege.

      在北方，德国人包围了列宁格勒。尽管忍受着极大困苦，列宁格勒的人民绝不投降。列宁格勒保卫战一直持续到冬季，此时该市的处境变得危急。由于食品匮乏，人们死于饥饿与疾病。到了1941年和1942年之间的寒冬，几乎每天有4千人死于饥饿。列宁格勒之围造成近百万人死亡。

15    In the center of Russia, Hitler's goal was the capture of Moscow. Because the Germans had anticipated a quick victory, they had made no plans for winter supplies. October arrived with heavy rains. "General Mud" slowed down the movement of the Germans' lightning attack.

      在俄国中部，希特勒的目标是占领莫斯科。由于德国人指望速战速决，他们没有准备过冬的补给。10月来临，大雨不停。“泥泞将军”拖延了德国人闪电式进攻的行动。

16    As Hitler's armies drew closer and closer to Moscow, an early, severe winter settled over the Soviet Union, the harshest in years. Temperatures dropped to minus 48 degrees Celsius. Heavy snows fell. The German soldiers, completely unprepared for the Russian winter, froze in their light summer uniforms. The German tanks lay buried in the heavy snowbanks. The Russian winter brought the German offensive to a halt.

      正当希特勒的军队逼近莫斯科时，寒冷的冬季早早地降临苏联，那是多年不遇的严寒。气温降到摄氏零下48度。大雪纷飞。对俄国的严寒冬季毫无思想准备的德国士兵身着单薄的夏装，一个个被冻伤。德国人的坦克掩埋在深深的雪堆中。俄罗斯的冬季阻止了德国人的攻势。

17    By the summer of 1942, Hitler had launched two new offensives. In the south, the Germans captured Sevastopol. Hitler then pushed east to Stalingrad, a great industrial city that stretched for 48 kilometers along the Volga River. Despite great suffering, Soviet defenders refused to give up Stalingrad.

      到1942夏天，希特勒又发起两场新的攻势。在南方，德国人占领了塞瓦斯托波尔。希特勒随后向东推进到斯大林格勒，那是沿伏尔加河绵延48公里的一座大工业城市。尽管艰苦卓绝，苏联抵抗者拒绝放弃斯大林格勒。

18    In November 1942, the Russians launched a counterattack. With little or no shelter from the winter cold in and around Stalingrad, German troops were further weakened by a lack of food and supplies. Not until January 1943 did the Germans give up their siege. Of the three hundred thousand Germans attacking Stalingrad, only ninety thousand starving soldiers were left. The loss of the battle for Stalingrad finally turned the tide against Hitler. The German victories were over, thanks in part to the Russian winter.

      1942年11月，俄国人发起了一场反攻。德国军队在斯大林格勒城内外几乎没有挡风避寒的地方，食品和补给的匮乏更使其元气大伤。直到1943年1月德国人才放弃围城。进攻斯大林格勒的30万德国人只剩下9万忍饥挨饿的士兵。斯大林格勒一战的失利最终使希特勒时乖运蹇。部分地由于俄罗斯的冬季，德国人走向失败。

19    During 1943 and 1944, the Soviet armies pushed the German front back toward the west. In the north, the Red Army broke the three-year siege of Leningrad with a surprise attack on January 15, 1944. Within two weeks, the heroic survivors of Leningrad saw their invaders depart. By March 1944, the Ukraine farming region was again in Soviet hands. On May 9, 1944, Sevastopol was liberated from the Germans. The Russians were now heading for Berlin.

      在1943年与1944年期间，苏联军队将德军阵线往西逼退。在北方，1944年1月15日，红军发起突然袭击，解除了列宁格勒长达3年之久的围困。列宁格勒那些英勇无畏的幸存者看着入侵者在两个星期内全部撤离。到了1944年3月，乌克兰的农村又回到了苏维埃手中。1944年5月9日，塞瓦斯托波尔从德国人手中被解放出来。至此，俄国人向柏林进发。

20    For Hitler, the invasion of the Soviet Union had turned into a military disaster. For the Russian people, it brought unspeakable suffering. The total Soviet dead in World War II reached almost 23 million.

      就希特勒而言，对苏联的入侵成为一场军事灾难。对俄罗斯人民来说，这场入侵带来了无法形容的苦难。苏维埃在第二次世界大战中死亡的人数几乎达到2300万。

Russia's Icy Defender俄罗斯的冰雪卫士

21    The elements of nature must be reckoned with in any military campaign. Napoleon and Hitler both underestimated the severity of the Russian winter. Snow, ice, and freezing temperatures took their toll on both invading armies. For the Russian people, the winter was an icy defender.

      任何军事行动都必须考虑到自然的因素。拿破仑和希特勒都低估了俄罗斯冬季的严酷。冰雪和极低的气温使两支侵略军付出惨重的代价。对俄罗斯人民而言，严冬是他们的冰雪卫士。

Book IV Unit 2 Smart Cars

智能汽车

Michio Kaku

 

1     Even the automobile industry, which has remained largely unchanged for the last seventy years, is about to feel the effects of the computer revolution.

       即便是过去70年间基本上没有多少变化的汽车工业，也将感受到计算机革命的影响。

2    The automobile industry ranks as among the most lucrative and powerful industries of the twentieth century. There are presently 500 million cars on earth, or one car for every ten people. Sales of the automobile industry stand at about a trillion dollars, making it the world's biggest manufacturing industry.

      汽车工业是20世纪最赚钱、最有影响力的产业之一。目前世界上有5亿辆车，或者说每10人就有1辆车。汽车工业的销售额达一万亿美元左右，从而成为世界上最大的制造业。

3    The car, and the roads it travels on, will be revolutionized in the twenty-first century. The key to tomorrow's "smart cars" will be sensors. "We'll see vehicles and roads that see and hear and feel and smell and talk and act," predicts Bill Spreitzer, technical director of General Motors Corporation's ITS program, which is designing the smart car and road of the future.

      汽车及其行驶的道路，将在21世纪发生重大变革。未来“智能汽车”的关键在于传感器。“我们会见到能看、能听、有知觉、具嗅觉、会说话并能采取行动的车辆与道路，”正在设计未来智能汽车和智能道路的通用汽车公司ITS项目的技术主任比尔·斯普雷扎预言道。

4    Approximately 40,000 people are killed each year in the United States in traffic accidents. The number of people that are killed or badly injured in car accidents is so vast that we don't even bother to mention them in the newspapers anymore. Fully half of these fatalities come from drunk drivers, and many others from carelessness. A smart car could eliminate most of these car accidents. It can sense if a driver is drunk via electronic sensors that can pick up alcohol vapor in the air, and refuse to start up the engine. The car could also alert the police and provide its precise location if it is stolen.

      美国每年有大约4万人死于交通事故。在汽车事故中死亡或严重受伤的人数太多，我们已经不屑在报纸上提及。这些死亡的人中至少有半数是酒后开车者造成的，另有许多死亡事故是驾驶员不小心所导致。智能汽车能消除绝大多数这类汽车事故。它能通过会感测空气中的酒精雾气的电子传感器检测开车者是否喝醉酒，并拒绝启动引擎。这种车还能在遇窃后通报警方，告知车辆的确切地点。

5    Smart cars have already been built which can monitor one's driving and the driving conditions nearby. Small radars hidden in the bumpers can scan for nearby cars. Should you make a serious driving mistake (e.g., change lanes when there is a car in your "blind spot") the computer would sound an immediate warning.      

能监控行车过程以及周围行车状况的智能汽车已经建造出来。藏在保险杠里的微型雷达能对周围的汽车作扫描。如果你发生重大行车失误（如变道时有车辆你“盲点”内），计算机立即会发出警报。

6    At the MIT Media Lab, a prototype is already being built which will determine how sleepy you are as you drive, which is especially important for long-distance truck drivers. The monotonous, almost hypnotic process of staring at the center divider for long hours is a grossly underestimated, life-threatening hazard. To eliminate this, a tiny camera hidden in the dashboard can be trained on a driver's face and eyes. If the driver's eyelids close for a certain length of time and his or her driving becomes erratic, a computer in the dashboard could alert the driver.

      在麻省理工学院媒介实验室，业已制造出能测知你行车时有多少睡意的样车，这对长途卡车司机意义尤其重要。一连数小时注视着中夹分道线这样一个单调、几乎能催眠的过程是被严重低估的威胁生命的重大隐患。为消除这一隐患，藏在仪表板里的一架微型相机可对准开车者的脸部及眼睛。如果司机的眼帘合上一定时间，行车变得不稳，仪表板里的计算机就会向司机发出警报。

7    Two of the most frustrating things about driving a car are getting lost and getting stuck in traffic. While the computer revolution is unlikely to cure these problems, it will have a positive impact. Sensors in your car tuned to radio signals from orbiting satellites can locate your car precisely at any moment and warn of traffic jams. We already have twenty-four Navstar satellites orbiting the earth, making up what is called the Global Positioning System. They make it possible to determine your location on the earth to within about a hundred feet. At any given time, there are several GPS satellites orbiting overhead at a distance of about 11,000 miles. Each satellite contains four "atomic clocks," which vibrate at a precise frequency, according to the laws of the quantum theory.

      开车最头疼的两大麻烦是迷路和交通堵塞。虽然计算机革命不可能彻底解决这两个问题，但却会带来积极的影响。你汽车上与绕轨道运行的卫星发出的无线电信号调谐的传感器能随时精确地确定你汽车的方位，并告知交通阻塞情况。我们已经有24颗环绕地球运行的导航卫星，组成了人们所说的全球卫星定位系统。通过这些卫星我们有可能以小于100英尺的误差确定你在地球上的方位。在任何一个特定时间，总有若干颗全球定位系统的卫星在11000英里的高空绕地球运行。每颗卫星都装有4个“原子钟”，它们根据量子理论法则，以精确的频率振动。

8    As a satellite passes overhead, it sends out a radio signal that can be detected by a receiver in a car's computer. The car's computer can then calculate how far the satellite is by measuring how long it took for the signal to arrive. Since the speed of light is well known, any delay in receiving the satellite's signal can be converted into a distance.

      卫星从高空经过时发出能被汽车上计算机里的接收器辨认的无线电信号。汽车上的计算机就会根据信号传来所花的时间计算出卫星有多远。由于光速为人熟知，接收卫星信号时的任何时间迟缓都能折算出距离的远近。

9    In Japan there are already over a million cars with some type of navigational capability. (Some of them locate a car's position by correlating the rotations in the steering wheel to its position on a map.)

      在日本，具有某种导航能力的汽车已有一百万辆之多。（有些导航装置通过将方向盘的转动与汽车在地图上的位置并置来测定汽车的方位。）

10    With the price of microchips dropping so drastically, future applications of GPS are virtually limitless. "The commercial industry is poised to explode," says Randy Hoffman of Magellan Systems Corp. , which manufactures navigational systems. Blind individuals could use GPS sensors in walking sticks, airplanes could land by remote control, hikers will be able to locate their position in the woods -- the list of potential uses is endless.

      随着微芯片价格的大幅度下降，未来对全球卫星定位系统的应用几乎是无限的。“制造这一商品的工业定会飞速发展，”生产导航系统的麦哲伦航仪公司的兰迪·霍夫曼说。盲人可以在手杖里装配全球卫星定位系统传感器，飞机可以通过遥控着陆，徒步旅行者可以测定自己在林中的方位—其潜在的应用范围是无止境的。

11    GPS is actually but part of a larger movement, called "telematics," which will eventually attempt to put smart cars on smart highways. Prototypes of such highways already exist in Europe, and experiments are being made in California to mount computer chips, sensors, and radio transmitters on highways to alert cars to traffic jams and obstructions.

      全球卫星定位系统其实只是叫做“远程信息学”的这一更大行动的一部分，这一行动最终将把智能汽车送上智能高速公路。这种高速公路的样品已经在欧洲问世，加州也在进行试验，在高速公路上安装计算机芯片、传感器和无线电发射机，以便向汽车报告交通拥挤堵塞情况。

12    On an eight-mile stretch of Interstate 15 ten miles north of San Diego, traffic engineers are installing an MIT-designed system which will introduce the "automated driver." The plan calls for computers, aided by thousands of three-inch magnetic spikes buried in the highway, to take complete control of the driving of cars on heavily trafficked roads. Cars will be bunched into groups of ten to twelve vehicles, only six feet apart, traveling in unison, and controlled by computer.

      在圣迭戈以北10英里的15号州际公路一段8英里长的路面上，交通工程师正在安装一个由麻省理工学院设计的引进“自动司机”的系统。这一计划要求计算机在公路上埋设的数千个3英寸长的磁钉的协助下，在车辆极多的路段完全控制车辆的运行。车辆会编成10辆或12辆一组，车距仅6英尺，在计算机的控制下一齐行驶。

13    Promoters of this computerized highway have great hopes for its future. By 2010, telematics may well be incorporated into one of the major highways in the United States. If successful, by 2020, as the price of microchips drops to below a penny a piece, telematics could be adopted in thousands of miles of highways in the United States. This could prove to be an environmental boon as well, saving fuel, reducing traffic jams, decreasing air pollution, and serving as an alternative to highway expansion.

      这种计算机化的公路的倡导者对其未来的应用充满希望。到2010年，远程信息技术很可能应用于美国的一条主要公路。如果成功的话，到2020年，当微芯片的价格降到一片一美分以下时，远程信息技术就会应用在美国成千上万英里的公路上。这对环保也会很有利，能节省燃油，减轻交通阻塞，减少空气污染，还可用作公路扩建的替代办法。

 

Book IV Unit 3 Get the Job You Want   

得到你想要的工作

Harvey B. Mackay

 

1     I run a manufacturing company with about 350 employees, and I often do the interviewing and hiring myself. I like talking to potential salespeople, because they're our link to customers.

我经营着一家有350名左右员工的制造公司，我本人常常要对求职者进行面试，决定是否聘用。我喜欢与可能成为营业员的人交谈，因为他们会是我们与顾客联系的纽带。

2    When a recent college graduate came into my office not too long ago looking for a sales job, I asked him what he had done to prepare for the interview. He said he'd read something about us somewhere.

不久前一个新近毕业的大学生到我办公室谋求一份销售工作。我问他为这次面试做过哪些准备。他说他在什么地方看到过有关本公司的一些情况。

3    Had he called anyone at Mackay Envelope Corporation to find out more about us? No. Had he called our suppliers? Our customers? No.

他有没有给麦凯信封公司的人打过电话，好了解更多有关我们的情况？没打过。他有没有给我们的供应厂商打过电话？还有我们的客户？都没有。

4    Had he checked with his university to see if there were any graduates working at Mackay whom he could interview? Had he asked any friends to grill him in a mock interview? Did he go to the library to find newspaper clippings on us?

他可曾在就读的大学里查问过有没有校友在本公司就职，以便向他们了解一些情况?他可曾请朋友向他提问，对他进行模拟面试？可曾去图书馆查找过有关本公司的剪报？

5    Did he write a letter beforehand to tell us about himself, what he was doing to prepare for the interview and why he'd be right for the job? Was he planning to follow up the interview with another letter indicating his eagerness to join us? Would the letter be in our hands within 24 hours of the meeting, possibly even hand-delivered?       

他事先有没有写封信来介绍自己，告诉我们自己为这次面试在做哪些准备，自己何以能胜任此项工作？面试之后他是否打算再写一封信，表明自己加盟本公司的诚意？这封信会不会在面试后的24小时之内送到我们手上，也许甚至是亲自送来？

6    The answer to every question was the same: no. That left me with only one other question: How well prepared would this person be if he were to call on a prospective customer for us? I already knew the answer.

他对上述每一个问题的回答全都一样：没有。这样我就只剩一个问题要问了：如果此人代表本公司去见可能成为我们客户的人，他准备工作会做得怎样？答案不言自明。

7    As I see it, there are four keys to getting hired:

在笔者看来，如欲被聘用，应注意四个要诀：

8    1. Prepare to win. "If you miss one day of practice, you notice the difference," the saying goes among musicians. "If you miss two days of practice, the critics notice the difference. If you miss three days of practice, the audience notices the difference."

      1. 准备去赢。“一日不练，自己知道，”音乐家中有这样的说法。"两日不练，音乐评论家知道。三日不练，观众知道。"

9    When we watch a world-class musician or a top athlete, we don't see the years of preparation that enabled him or her to become great. The Michael Jordans of the world have talent, yes, but they're also the first ones on and the last ones off the basketball court. The same preparation applies in every form of human endeavor. If you want the job, you have to prepare to win it.

      我们在观看世界级音乐家或顶尖运动员的表演时，看到的并不是使他们变成出类拔萃人物的长年苦练。世界上诸如迈克尔·乔丹这样的顶尖人物无疑具有非凡才能，但他们在篮球场上也是第一个到，最后一个走。同样的苦练适用于人类的各项活动。若想被聘用，就要准备去赢。

10    When I graduated from college, the odds were good that I would have the same job for the rest of my life. And that's how it worked out. But getting hired is no longer a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Employment experts believe that today's graduates could face as many as ten job changes during their careers.

      我大学毕业时，我极有可能终身从事同一个工作。当时情况也的确如此。但如今已不再是一生被聘去做一个工作了。指导就业的专家认为，今天的大学毕业生在他们的生涯中可能会经历多达10次的职业变动。

11    That may sound like a lot of pressure. But if you're prepared, the pressure is on the other folks -- the ones who haven't done their homework.

      听上去似乎压力不小。然而，如果你做了准备，压力就是别人的—那些没做准备的人.

12    You won't get every job you go after. The best salespeople don't close every sale. Michael Jordan makes barely half of his field-goal attempts. But it takes no longer to prepare well for one interview than to wander in half-prepared for five. And your prospects for success will be many times better.

      你不可能得到你想要的每份工作。最好的售货人员也不可能每次都成交。迈克尔·乔丹投篮命中率勉强过半。但认真准备一次面试的时间不会多于马马虎虎准备五次面试的时间，而你成功的可能性要多得多。

13    2. Never stop learning. Recently I played a doubles tennis match paired with a 90-year-old. I wondered how things would work out; I shouldn't have. We hammered our opponents 6-1, 6-1!

      2. 永不中断学习。最近我和一位90高龄的老者搭档打双人网球。我琢磨着那会是什么结局；可我的担心是多余的。我们以两个6:1击败对手。

14    As we were switching sides to play a third set, he said to me, "Do you mind if I play the backhand court? I always like to work on my weaknesses." What a fantastic example of a person who has never stopped learning. Incidentally, we won the third set 6-1.

      我们交换场地打第三局时，他对我说：“我打反手击球你不介意吧？我向来喜欢多练练自己的弱点。”好一个永不中断学习的精彩实例。顺便说一下，我们6:1赢了第三局。

15    As we walked off the court, my 90-year-old partner chuckled and said, "I thought you'd like to know about my number-one ranking in doubles in the United States in my age bracket, 85 and up!" He wasn't thinking 90; he wasn't even thinking 85. He was thinking number one.

      走出赛场，我那90高龄的搭档笑着说：“你也许想知道我在85岁以上年龄段的美国网球双打排名第一！”他想的不是年届90，想的甚至也不是85岁高龄。他想的是第一。

16    You can do the same if you work on your weaknesses and develop your strengths. To be able to compete, you've got to keep learning all your life.

      如果你努力克服自己的弱点，发挥自己的优势，你同样可以做得那么好。要有能力竞争，就得终生学习。

17    3. Believe in yourself, even when no one else does. Do you remember the four-minute mile? Athletes had been trying to do it for hundreds of years and finally decided it was physically impossible for humans. Our bone structure was all wrong, our lung power inadequate.

      3. 相信自己，哪怕没人相信你。还记得那4分钟跑一英里的往事吗？几百年来，运动员们一直试图实现这一目标，最终人类的身体无法做到。我们的骨结构不适应，我们的肺活量跟不上。

18    Then one human proved the experts wrong. And, miracle of miracles, six weeks after Roger Bannister broke the four-minute mile, John Landy beat Bannister's time by nearly two full seconds. Since then, close to eight hundred runners have broken the four-minute mile!

      可是，有一个人证明那些专家错了。奇迹中的奇迹是，在罗杰·班尼斯特打破4分钟一英里的纪录6个星期之后，约翰·兰迪又以几乎快出整整2秒的成绩打破了班尼斯特的纪录。此后，有大约800多名运动员打破了4分钟一英里的记录。

19    Several years ago my daughter Mimi and I took a crack at running the New York Marathon. At the gun, 23,000 runners started -- and 21,244 finished. First place went to a Kenyan who completed the race in two hours, 11 minutes and one second. The 21,244th runner to finish was a Vietnam veteran. He did it in three days, nine hours and 37 minutes. With no legs, he covered 26.2 miles. After my daughter and I passed him in the first few minutes, we easily found more courage to finish ourselves.

      几年前，我和女儿米米参加了纽约马拉松比赛。发令枪一响，23,000名运动员冲出起跑线—最后有21,244名运动员到达终点。第一名是一位以2小时11分钟零1秒跑完全程的肯尼亚人。第21,244名运动员是一位越战老兵。他用了3天9小时37分钟跑完全程。没有双腿的他坚持跑完了26.2英里。我和女儿在比赛的最初几分钟内超过了他，当时顿觉勇气倍增，一定要跑完全程。

20    Don't ever let anyone tell you that you can't accomplish your goals. Who says you're not tougher, harder working and more able than your competition? You see, a goal is a dream with a deadline: in writing, measurable, identifiable, attainable.

      别听旁人说你不能实现自己的目标。谁说你不比你的竞争对手更坚强、更努力、更能干？要知道，所谓目标就是有最后限期的梦想：写成文字，可测量，可确认，可实现。

21    4. Find a way to make a difference. In my opinion, the majority of New York cabdrivers are unfriendly, if not downright rude. Most of the cabs are filthy, and almost all of them sport an impenetrable, bulletproof partition. But recently I jumped into a cab at LaGuardia Airport and guess what? It was clean. There was beautiful music playing and no partition.

      4. 想方设法显得与众不同。在我看来，纽约大多数的出租车司机即使不算无礼透顶，至少也是不友好的。车辆大都十分肮脏，几乎所有的车都触目地装有难以穿透的防弹隔离装置。可近日我在拉瓜迪亚机场跳上了一辆出租车，你猜怎么样？车子竟然干干净净。放着优美的音乐，而且没有隔离装置。

22    "Park Lane Hotel, please," I said to the driver. With a broad smile, he said, "Hi, my name is Wally," and he handed me a mission statement. A mission statement! It said he would get me there safely, courteously and on time.

      “请到帕克街酒店，”我对司机说。他笑容满面地说：“你好，我叫沃利，”他说着递给我一份保证书。一份保证书！上面写着他将安全、礼貌、准时地将我送到目的地。

23    As we drove off, he held up a choice of newspapers and said, "Be my guest." He told me to help myself to the fruit in the basket on the back seat. He held up a cellular phone and said, "It's a dollar a minute if you'd like to make a call."

      车开后，他拿出几份报纸说：“请随意翻阅。”他还让我随意品尝后座篮子里的水果。接着他又拿出手机说：“您要是想打电话，每分钟1美元。”

24    Shocked, I blurted, "How long have you been practicing this?" He answered, "Three or four years."

      我大吃一惊，脱口问道：“你这么做有多久了？”他回答说：“有三、四年了。”

25    "I know this is prying." I said, "but how much extra money do you earn in tips?"

      “我知道不该问，”我说，“可是，你能多挣多少小费？”

26     "Between $12,000 and $14,000 a year!" he responded proudly.

      “一年12,000到14,000美元左右，”他得意地回答说。

27    He doesn't know it, but he's my hero. He's living proof that you can always shift the odds in your favor.

      他不知道他成了我心目中的英雄。他就是一个生动的例证，说明你总是可以争取到成功的机会。

28    My mentor, Curt Carlson, is the wealthiest man in Minnesota, owner of a hotel and travel company with sales in the neighborhood of $9 billion. I had to get to a meeting in New York one day, and Curt generously offered me a ride in his jet. It happened to be a day Minnesota was hit with one of the worst snowstorms in years. Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport was closed for the first time in decades.

      我的良师益友柯特·卡尔森是明尼苏达州的首富，拥有一家酒店和旅行社，营业收入约达90亿美元。一次我要去纽约赴会，柯特慷慨地请我乘坐他的私人飞机。碰巧那天明尼苏达州遭受多年不遇的暴风雪袭击。明尼阿波利斯—圣保罗国际机场几十年来第一次关闭。

29     Then, though the storm continued to pound us, the airport opened a runway for small craft only. As we were taxiing down it to take off, Curt turned to me and said gleefully, "Look, Harvey, no tracks in the snow!"

      虽然暴风雪仍在肆虐，机场还是特地为小型飞机清出了一条跑道。我们正在跑道上滑行准备起飞时，柯特转过头来兴奋地说：“看哪，哈维，雪地上没有痕迹啊！”

30    Curt Carlson, 70 years old at the time, rich beyond anyone's dreams, could still sparkle with excitement about being first.

      柯特·卡尔森，当时年届70，富甲一方，竟然还会因为自己是第一个而如此兴奋。

31     From my standpoint, that's what it's all about. Prepare to win. Never stop learning. Believe in yourself, even when no one else does. Find a way to make a difference. Then go out and make your own tracks in the snow.

      在我看来，这些正是关键之所在。准备去赢。永不中断学习。相信自己，哪怕没人相信你。想方设法显得与众不同。然后就出发，在雪地上留下你自己的足迹。

 

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Book IV Unit 4 In Search of Davos Man

寻找达沃斯人

Peter Gumbel

 

1 William Browder was born in Princeton, New Jersey, grew up in Chicago，and studied at Stanford University in California. But don’t call him an American. For the past 16 of his 40 years he has lived outside the U.S., first in London and then, from 1996, in Moscow, where he runs his own investment firm. Browder now manages $1.6 billion in assets. In 1998 he gave up his American passport to become a British citizen, since his life is now centered in Europe. “National identity makes no difference for me,” he says. “I feel completely international. If you have four good friends and you like what you are doing, it doesn’t matter where you are. That’s globalization.” 

威廉·布劳德在新泽西州的普林斯顿出生，成长于芝加哥，就读于加利福尼亚州的斯坦福大学。但别称其为美国人。他今年40岁了，过去的16年来一直没在美国生活，最初是在伦敦，1996年后在莫斯科经营自己的投资公司。布劳德如今掌管的资产价值是16亿美元。1998年，他放弃美国护照，成为一名英国公民，因为欧洲是他现在的生活中心。“国家认同对我来说无所谓，”他说，“我觉得自己完全是个国际人。如果你有四个好朋友，而且你又喜欢自己所做的事情，那么你在哪儿都无关紧要。那就是全球化。” 

2 Alex Mandl is also a fervent believer in globalization, but he views himself very differently. A former president of AT & T, Mandl, 61, was born in Austria and now runs a French technology company, which is doing more and more business in China. He reckons he spends about 90% of his time traveling on business. But despite all that globetrotting, Mandl who has been a U.S. citizen for 45 years still identifies himself as an American. “I see myself as American without any hesitation. The fact that I spend a lot of time in other places doesn’t change that,” he says. 

亚历克斯·曼德尔也是全球化的狂热信奉者，但他对于自己的看法与布劳德截然不同。61岁的曼德尔曾任美国电话电报公司总裁。他出生于奥地利，现在经营着一家法国技术公司，该公司在中国的业务正迅速增加。他估计自己90%左右的时间花在了出差上。尽管曼德尔全球到处跑，已经做了45年美国公民的他仍然认为自己是个美国人。“我毫不犹豫地把自己当做美国人。虽然我在其他地方度过很多时间，但是并不能改变我是美国人的事实，”他说。

3   Although Browder and Mandl define their nationality differently, both see their identity as a matter of personal choice, not an accident of birth. And not incidentally, both are Davos Men, members of the international business elite who trek each year to the Swiss Alpine town for the annual meeting of the world Economic Forum, founded in 1971. This week, Browder and Mandl will join more than 2,200 executives, politicians, academics, journalists, writers and a handful of Hollywood stars for five days of networking, parties and endless earnest discussions about everything from post-election Iraq and HIV in Africa to the global supply of oil and the implications of nanotechnology. Yet this year, perhaps more than ever, a hot topic at Davos is Davos itself. Whatever their considerable differences, most Davos Men and Women share at least one belief that globalization, the unimpeded flows of capital, labor and technology across national borders, is both welcome and unstoppable. They see the world increasingly as one vast, interconnected marketplace in which corporations search for the most advantageous locations to buy, produce and sell their goods and services. 

虽然布劳德和曼德尔对各自的国籍有不同的界定，但他们都将国籍视为个人选择问题，而并非由出生地决定。而且，他们两个人都是达沃斯人，这可不是凑巧的事。达沃斯人指的是那些每年长途跋涉去瑞士阿尔卑斯山区的小城参加年度世界经济论坛的国际商业精英们。（该论坛成立于1971年）本周，布劳德和曼德尔将同2200余名企业高管﹑政客﹑学者﹑记者﹑作家和几位好莱坞明星一起，参加为期五天的交际活动﹑宴会和无休止的认真的讨论。讨论话题形形色色，从大选后的伊拉克和非洲的艾滋病病毒到全球的石油供应和纳米技术的意义。但是今年，或许比以往更甚的是，达沃斯论坛的一个热门话题即达沃斯本身。尽管与会男女各不相同，但他们大多数有一个共同的信念：全球化，即资本﹑劳动力和技术不受阻碍的跨国界流动，既值得欢迎又不可阻挡。在他们看来，世界越来越像一个巨大的互相联系的市场。在这个市场里，企业寻求采购﹑生产及销售产品和服务的最佳地点。 

4 As borders and national identities become less important, some find that threatening and even dangerous. In an essay entitled “Dead Soul: The Denationalization of the American Elite,” Harvard Professor Samuel Huntington describes Davos Man (a phrase that first got widespread attention in the 1990s) as an emerging global superspecies and a threat. The members of this class, he writes, are people who “have little need for national loyalty, view national boundaries as obstacles that thankfully are vanishing, and see national governments as residues from the past whose only useful function is to facilitate the elite’s global operations. ” Huntington argues that Davos Man’s global-citizen self-image is starkly at odds with the values of most Americans, who remain deeply committed to their nation. This disconnect, he says, creates “a major cultural fault line. In a variety of ways, the American establishment, governmental and private, has become increasingly divorced from the American people.” 

随着对边界和对国家的认同变得不那么重要，有些人将此当成威胁，甚至危险。哈佛大学教授塞缪尔·亨廷顿在一篇题目为《死魂灵：美国精英的非国家化》的论文中将达沃斯人（该说法在20世纪90年代首次引起广泛关注）描写为新兴的全球超级物种和威胁。他写道，该阶层的成员“不需要什么对国家的忠诚，将国界视为障碍，而值得庆幸的是这种障碍正在消失，他们还把国家政府看做是历史遗留下来的东西，它们唯一的作用是为精英们的全球运营提供方便”。亨廷顿提出，达沃斯人全球公民的自我形象与大多数美国人的价值观完全不同。后者依然坚定地忠于他们自己的国家。他说，这种脱节创造了“一个重大的文化断层。美国当权派﹑政府和私营企业均与美国大众渐行渐远”。 

5 Naturally, many Davos Men don’t accept Hutington’s term. Klaus Schwab, the founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, argues that endorsing a global outlook does not mean erasing national identity. “Globalization can never provide us with cultural identity, which needs to be local and national in nature.” 

许多达沃斯人当然不接受亨廷顿的说法。世界经济论坛的创始人兼执行主席克劳斯·施瓦布争辩说，对全球观表示赞同并不意味着去除对国家的认同。“全球化永远不可能给予我们文化上的认同，因为后者在本质上必须是本土的﹑民族的。” 

6 Global trade has been around for centuries; the corporations and countries that benefited from it were largely content to treat vast parts of the world as places to mine natural resources or sell finished products. Even as the globalization of capital accelerated in the 1980s, most foreign investment was between relatively wealthy countries, not from wealthy countries into poor ones. U.S. technology, companies and money were often at the forefront of this movement.

全球贸易已经持续了几个世纪；过去从中获益的企业和国家在很大程度上满足于这一点，即将世界上的广大地区当做自然资源的开采或者是成品的销售地。尽管到了20世纪80年代，资本全球化的速度加快，大多数外国投资仍然在相对富裕的国家间进行，并非从富裕国家流向较贫穷的国家。美国的技术、公司和资金通常处于这种流动的前沿。 

7 However the past two decades have witnessed the rise of other significant players. The developed world is beating a path to China and India’s door – and Chinese and Indian companies, in turn, have started what it calls a “Going Out” policy that encourages Chinese firms to buy assets overseas. Asian nations are creating “a remarkable environment of innovation,” says John  Chambers, chief executive of Cisco System. “China and India are graduating currently more than five times the number of engineers that we are here in the U.S.” That means U.S. and European companies are now facing high-quality, low cost competition from overseas. No wonder so many Western workers worry about losing their jobs. “If the issue is the size of the total pie, globalization has proved a good thing,” say Orit Gadiesh, chairman of consultants Bain & Co. “If the issue is how the pie is divided, if you’re in the Western world you could question that.”

但是，故去的二十年见证了另外一些重大参与者的出现。发达国家正在开辟一条通向中国和印度的大门的道路-------中国和印度的公司却将眼光投向海外以谋求未来的发展。北京甚至提出了“走出去”的政策，鼓励中国企业购买海外资产。亚洲各国正在形成“一个卓越的创新性环境”，思科系统公司的首席执行官约翰·钱伯斯如是说，“目前中国和印度的工科大学毕业生是我们美国的五倍还多。”那就意味着美国和欧洲的公司正面临着来自外海的高质量且低成本的竞争。难怪那么多西方工人担心失业。“如果问题涉及的是整个蛋糕的大小，那全球化已经被证明是件好事。”贝恩管理咨询公司的董事长奥里特·加迪西说，“如果问题是在于蛋糕怎么分，而你又是西方人，那你就会质疑全球化。” 

8 The biggest shift may just be starting. A landmark 2003 study by Goldman Sachs predicted that four economies – Russia, Brazil, India and China – will become a much larger force in the world economy than widely expected, based on projections of demographic and economic growth, with China potentially overtaking Germany this decade. By 2050, Goldman Sachs suggested, these four newcomers will likely have displaced all but the U.S. and Japan from the top six economies in the world. 

最大的变化或许刚刚开始。高盛集团2003年进行的一项既有里程碑意义的研究预测说，根据对人口和经济增长的预计，四大经济体 -- 俄罗斯、巴西、印度和中国 -- 在世界经济中的力量将普遍超过预期。中国的经济实力极可能就在这个十年内赶超德国。高盛集团说，到2050年，这四大经济体将有可能取代目前世界前六大经济体中除美国和日本之外的四个经济体。 

9 It’s also entirely possible that the near future may see the pendulum of capital swing away from Davos Man-style globalization. One counterpoint is Manila Woman – low-paid migrant workers from Asia and elsewhere who are increasingly providing key services around the world. Valerie Gooding, the chief executive of British health care company BUPA, says the British and U.S. health care system would break down without immigrant nurses from Philippines, India, Nigeria and elsewhere. unlike Davos Man, she says, they’re not ambivalent about being strongly patriotic.

在不远的将来，资本流动也完全有可能脱离达沃斯人式的全球化运行的轨迹。与达沃斯人相对应的是马尼拉女人。这些来自亚洲和其他地方的低薪流动工人正在全世界提供日益增多的关键服务。英国一家医疗保健公司------保柏集团的首席执行官瓦莱丽·戈丁说，要是没有来自菲律宾、印度、尼日利亚和其他地方的移民护士，英美两国的医疗保健体系就会崩溃。她说，与达沃斯人不同，她们毫不掩饰自己强烈的爱国情绪。 

10 Not all Davos Men seek global markets, either. Patrick Sayer runs a private equity firm in France called Eurazeo, and complains there are still too many barriers to cross-border business in Europe, let alone the world. So he’s focused Eurazeo on its domestic market. “I profit from being French in France. It’s easier for me to do deals,” Sayer says. “It’s the same elsewhere. If you’re not Italian in Italy, you won’t succeed.” 

并不是所有的达沃斯人都在追逐全球市场。帕特里克·塞尔在法国经营一家名为尤拉吉奥投资集团的私募股权公司。他抱怨说，欧洲跨国经营中尚有太多的障碍，更别提全球化经营了。因此他的尤拉吉奥投资集团专注于国内市场。“我是法国人，在法国做生意对我而言要方便得多，”塞尔说，“别处也一样。如果你不是意大利人，却要在意大利做生意，你是无法取得成功的。” 

11 That may sound like a narrow nationalism, yet it contains a hidden wisdom. Recall that Italy itself was, until 1861, not a unified nation but an aggregation of city-states. Despite tension between its north and south, there’s no contradiction between maintaining a regional identity and national one. Milanese Tronchetti Provera, chairman of Telecom Italia, for example, can feel both Milanese and Italian at once, even as he runs a company that is aspiring to become a bigger international presence. The question is whether it will take another 140 years for Davos Man to figure out how to strike the same balance on a global scale. 

那听上去也许像狭隘的民族主义，但其中确实大有学问。回想一下，在1861年前，意大利还不是一个统一的国家，而是由城邦组成的联合体。尽管意大利南北方之间关系紧张，但保持地区认同和国家认同之间并无矛盾。例如，意大利电信公司的董事长马尔科·科隆切蒂·普罗维拉就觉得自己是个米兰人，同时也是个意大利人，尽管他在经营的公司正努力获得更大的国际影响力。问题是，达沃斯人是否需要再花上140年的时间才能搞明白如何在全球范围内取得同样的平衡。

Book IV Unit 5 A Friend in Need  

患难之交

Somerset Maugham

 

1     For thirty years now I have been studying my fellowmen. I do not know very much about them. I shrug my shoulders when people tell me that their first impressions of a person are always right. I think they must have small insight or great vanity. For my own part I find that the longer I know people the more they puzzle me.

      三十年来，我一直研究我的人类同胞，但至今了解不多。每当有人跟我说他对一个人的第一次印象向来不错的时候，我就耸耸肩。我想这种人不是无知，就是自大。拿我自己来说，我发现，认识一个人的时间越长，我就越感到困惑。

2    These reflections have occurred to me because I read in this morning's paper that Edward Hyde Burton had died at Kobe. He was a merchant and he had been in business in Japan for many years. I knew him very little, but he interested me because once he gave me a great surprise. Unless I had heard the story from his own lips, I should never have believed that he was capable of such an action. It was more startling because both in appearance and manner he suggested a very definite type. Here if ever was a man all of a piece. He was a tiny little fellow, not much more than five feet four in height, and very slender, with white hair, a red face much wrinkled, and blue eyes. I suppose he was about sixty when I knew him. He was always neatly and quietly dressed in accordance with his age and station.

      我产生这些想法，是因为我在今天早上的报纸上看到爱德华·海德·伯顿在神户去世的消息。他是个商人，在日本经商多年。我跟他并不熟，但是对他挺有兴趣，因为有一次他让我大吃一惊。要不是听他亲口讲述这个故事，我根本不会相信他能做出这种事来。这件事之所以特别令人惊讶，是因为无论是外表还是风度，他都让人想到一种非常明确的类型。要说真有表里如一的人的话，那就是此公了。他个子很小，身高不过5英尺4英寸，身材纤细，白头发、蓝眼睛，红红的脸上布满皱纹。我估计自己认识他时，他大约有60岁光景。他向来衣着整洁素雅，合乎他的年龄和身份。

3    Though his offices were in Kobe, Burton often came down to Yokohama. I happened on one occasion to be spending a few days there, waiting for a ship, and I was introduced to him at the British Club. We played bridge together. He played a good game and a generous one. He did not talk very much, either then or later when we were having drinks, but what he said was sensible. He had a quiet, dry humor. He seemed to be popular at the club and afterwards, when he had gone, they described him as one of the best. It happened that we were both staying at the Grand Hotel and next day he asked me to dine with him. I met his wife, fat, elderly, and smiling, and his two daughters. It was evidently a united and affectionate family. I think the chief thing that struck me about Burton was his kindliness. There was something very pleasing in his mild blue eyes. His voice was gentle; you could not imagine that he could possibly raise it in anger; his smile was benign. Here was a man who attracted you because you felt in him a real love for his fellows. At the same time he liked his game of cards and his cocktail, he could tell with point a good and spicy story, and in his youth he had been something of an athlete. He was a rich man and he had made every penny himself. I suppose one thing that made you like him was that he was so small and frail; he aroused your instincts of protection. You felt that he could not bear to hurt a fly.

      伯顿的办事处设在神户，但他常常到横滨来。有一次，我正好因为等船，要在那里呆几天，在英国俱乐部经人介绍与他相识。我们在一起玩桥牌。他打得不错，牌风也好。无论在玩牌的时候，还是在后来一起喝酒的时候，他的话都不多，但说的话却都合情合理。他挺幽默，但并不咋呼。他在俱乐部里似乎人缘不错，后来，在他走了以后，人家都说他是个顶呱呱的人。事有凑巧，我们俩都住在格兰德大酒店。第二天他请我吃饭。我见到了他的太太 -- 一位肥肥胖胖、满面笑容的半老妇人 -- 和他的两个女儿。这显然是和睦恩爱的一家人。我想，伯顿当时给我印象最深的主要还是他这个人和善。他那双温和的蓝眼睛有种令人愉快的神情。他说话的声音轻柔；你无法想象他会提高嗓门大发雷霆；他的笑容和蔼可亲。这个人吸引你，是因为你从他身上感到他对别人的真正的爱。同时他也喜欢玩牌，喝鸡尾酒，他能绘声绘色地讲个来劲儿的段子什么的，他年轻时多少还是个运动员呢。他是个阔佬，但他的每一个便士都是自己挣来的。我想，人们喜欢他还有一个原因，那就是他非常瘦小、脆弱，容易引起人们的恻隐之心。你觉得他甚至连只蚂蚁都不忍伤害。

4    One afternoon I was sitting in the lounge of the Grand Hotel when Burton came in and seated himself in the chair next to mine.

5    "What do you say to a little drink?"

6    He clapped his hands for a boy and ordered two gin fizzes. As the boy brought them a man passed along the street outside and seeing me waved his hand.

7    "Do you know Turner?" said Burton as I nodded a greeting.

8    "I've met him at the club. I'm told he's a remittance man."

9    "Yes, I believe he is. We have a good many here."

10   "He plays bridge well."

      一天下午，我正坐在格兰德大酒店的大堂里，伯顿走了进来，在我旁边的椅子里坐下。

      “喝一点，怎么样？”

      他拍了拍手招呼侍者过来，要了两杯杜松子汽酒。侍者端来酒的时候，有个人从外面街上走过，见到我招了下手。

      “你认识特纳吗？”在我点头致意的时候，伯顿问道。

      “我是在俱乐部里认识他的。听说他是个靠国内寄钱过日子的人。”

      “是呀，我想是的。在这儿这种人可不少。”

      “他桥牌打得不错。”

11    "They generally do. There was a fellow here last year, oddly enough a namesake of mine, who was the best bridge player I ever met. I suppose you never came across him in London. Lenny Burton he called himself. I believe he'd belonged to some very good clubs."      

“这种人一般都玩得不错。去年这里有一个人，凑巧还和我同姓，我从来没有遇到过一个桥牌打得那么好的高手。我想你在伦敦没有碰见过他。他说他叫伦尼·伯顿。我相信，他加入过一些相当高级的俱乐部呢。”

12    "No, I don't believe I remember the name."

13    "He was quite a remarkable player. He seemed to have an instinct about the cards. It was uncanny. I used to play with him a lot. He was in Kobe for some time."

14    Burton sipped his gin fizz.

      “嗯，我实在不记得这个名字。”

      “他称得上是桥牌高手。好像对牌有一种本能似的，简直神了。我那会儿常和他一起玩牌。他在神户住了一段时间。”

      伯顿抿了一口杜松子汽酒。

15    "It's rather a funny story,' he said. 'He wasn't a bad chap. I liked him. He was always well-dressed and smart-looking. He was handsome in a way with curly hair and pink-and-white cheeks. Women thought a lot of him. There was no harm in him, you know, he was only wild. Of course he drank too much. Those sort of fellows always do. A bit of money used to come on for him once a quarter and he made a bit more by card-playing. He won a good deal of mine, I know that."

      “说来也是件有趣的事，”他说。“他人不坏。我挺喜欢他。他总是衣冠楚楚，样子挺帅。长得也算英俊，蜷曲的头发，两颊白里透红。女人都对他着迷。你知道，他没有什么害人之处，就是野了点。自然，他酒喝得太凶了。这种人总是这样。他每个季度收到一小笔钱，靠打牌再赚一点。他赢了我不少钱，这我可知道。”

16    Burton gave a kindly chuckle. I knew from my own experience that he could lose money at bridge with a good grace. He stroked his shaven chin with his thin hand; the veins stood out on it and it was almost transparent.

      伯顿和善地咯咯一笑。我的处世经验告诉我，他打桥牌输起钱来时一定是大大方方的。他用瘦小的手摸了摸剃得光光的下巴；手上青筋鼓起，手白得几乎透明。

17    "I suppose that is why he came to me when he went broke, that and the fact that he was a namesake of mine. He came to see me in my office one day and asked me for a job. I was rather surprised. He told me that there was no more money coming from home and he wanted to work. I asked him how old he was.

      “大概就是因为这个，当他落得一文不名的时候，就来找我了，再说他和我同姓。有一天，他到我办事处来见我，要我给他个差使。当时我颇为惊讶。他告诉我说家里不再给他寄钱了，他要干活儿了。我问他多大年纪。

18    "'Thirty-five,' he said.

19    "'And what have you been doing hitherto?' I asked him.

20    "'Well, nothing very much,' he said.

21    I couldn't help laughing.

22    "'I'm afraid I can't do anything for you just yet,' I said. 'Come back and see me in another thirty-five years, and I'll see what I can do.'

      “‘35，’他说。

      “‘你一直都干什么来着？’我问道。

      “‘嗯，没怎么干过事。’他说。

      “我禁不住笑了。

      “‘眼下恐怕不能帮你忙了，’我说。‘你再过35年来找我，到时候我再看看能帮些什么忙。’

23    "He didn't move. He went rather pale. He hesitated for a moment and then he told me that he had had bad luck at cards for some time. He hadn't been willing to stick to bridge, he'd been playing poker, and he'd got trimmed. He hadn't a penny. He'd pawned everything he had. He couldn't pay his hotel bill and they wouldn't give him any more credit. He was down and out. If he couldn't get something to do he'd have to commit suicide.

      “他没有动弹，脸色变得相当苍白。他犹豫了一会儿，然后对我说，这一阵子他牌运一直不好。原来他不甘心老打桥牌，便赌起扑克来，结果输了个精光。他一个子儿也没有，所有的东西都拿去当了。他连酒店的账都付不出，人家也不肯再赊账给他。他已经山穷水尽。要是找不到点事干，他只好自杀。

24    "I looked at him for a bit. I could see now that he was all to pieces. He'd been drinking more than usual and he looked fifty. The girls wouldn't have thought so much of him if they'd seen him then.

      “我瞧了他一会儿。我能看出他已经完全垮了。这一阵子他酒喝得比以前更凶，看上去足有50岁。姑娘们当时要是瞧见他，准不会对他那么着迷了。

25    "'Well isn't there anything you can do except play cards?' I asked him.

26    "'I can swim,' he said.

27    "'Swim!'

28    "I could hardly believe my ears; it seemed such an insane answer to give.

29    "'I swam for my university.'

      “‘嗯，你除了打牌以外，难道什么也不会干吗？’我问他。

      “‘我会游泳，’他说。

      “‘游泳！’

      “我几乎以为自己听错了呢；这种回答听起来简直是牛头不对马嘴。

      “‘我读大学时曾经代表学校参加游泳比赛。’

30    "I got some glimmering of what he was driving at. I've known too many men who were little tin gods at their university to be impressed by it.

31    "'I was a pretty good swimmer myself when I was a young man,' I said.

32    "Suddenly I had an idea."

33    Pausing in his story, Burton turned to me.

      “我听出了一点他话里的意思。上大学时自以为了不起的人我见得多了，我才不吃这套呢。

      “‘本人年轻时也是个游泳好手，’我说。

      “突然，我有了个想法。”

      伯顿停了下来，看着我。

34    "Do you know Kobe?" he asked.

35    "No," I said, "I passed through it once, but I only spent a night there."

36    "Then you don't know the Shioya Club. When I was a young man I swam from there round the beacon and landed at the creek of Tarumi. It's over three miles and it's rather difficult on account of the currents round the beacon. Well, I told my young namesake about it and I said to him that if he'd do it I'd give him a job.

      “你对神户熟悉吗？”他问。

      “不熟悉，”我说，“从前有一次路过那里，只呆了一个晚上。”

      “那么，你不会知道盐谷俱乐部吧。我年轻的时候，曾经从那里出发，游过灯塔直到垂水小溪上岸。一共3英里多路，灯塔一带有激流，游起来挺费劲。于是，我把这事告诉了那位与我同姓的年轻人，并对他说，要是他能游过去，我就给他一个差使。

37    "I could see he was rather taken aback.

38    "'You say you're a swimmer,' I said.

39    "'I'm not in very good condition,' he answered.

40    "I didn't say anything. I shrugged my shoulders. He looked at me for a moment and then he nodded.

41    "'All right,' he said. 'When do you want me to do it?'

      “我看得出，他吓了一跳。

      “‘你不是说你是游泳好手吗？’我说。

      “‘我现在身体状况不太好，’他回答说。

      “我什么也没说，只是耸了耸肩。他望了我一会儿，然后点了点头。

      “‘好吧，’他说了，‘你要我什么时候游呢？’

42    "I looked at my watch. It was just after ten.

43    "'The swim shouldn't take you much over an hour and a quarter. I'll drive round to the creek at half past twelve and meet you. I'll take you back to the club to dress and then we'll have lunch together.'

44    "'Done,' he said.

      “我看了看表。刚过十点。

      “‘你游这段距离大概要花一个钟头零一刻多一些。我到12点半开车到小溪那里去接你，带你到俱乐部换衣服，然后一起吃午饭。’

      “‘就这样吧，’他说。

45    "We shook hands. I wished him good luck and he left me. I had a lot of work to do that morning and I only just managed to get to the creek at Tarumi at half past twelve. But I needn't have hurried; he never turned up."

46    "Did he funk it at the last moment?" I asked.

      “我们握了握手。我祝他好运，他就走了。那天上午我有好些事要办，到12点半总算勉强赶到了垂水小溪。其实我根本用不着这么赶，他压根儿就没露面。”

      “他临阵脱逃了？”我问。

47    "No, he didn't funk it. He started all right. But of course he'd ruined his constitution by drink and dissipation. The currents round the beacon were more than he could manage. We didn't get the body for about three days."

      “没有，他没有临阵脱逃。他确实出发了。当然喽，他喝酒作乐早把身体搞垮了。灯塔周围的激流他对付不了。大约有三天，我们都没找到尸体。”

48    I didn't say anything for a moment or two. I was a trifle shocked. Then I asked Burton a question.

49    "When you made him that offer of a job, did you know he'd be drowned?"

50    He gave a little mild chuckle and he looked at me with those kind and candid blue eyes of his. He rubbed his chin with his hand.

51    "Well, I hadn't got a vacancy in my office at the moment."

      我好一会儿什么话也没说。我感到有些震惊。然后我问了伯顿一个问题。

      “你提出给他差使的时候，是不是知道他准会淹死？”

      他轻轻地咯咯一笑，用那双和善又坦率的蓝眼睛望着我。他用手摩挲着下巴。

      “哦，那时我的办事处可没有空缺呀。”

 

 

  大家好，我叫亓官劼（qí guān jié ），在CSDN中记录学习的点滴历程，时光荏苒，未来可期，加油~博客地址为：亓官劼的博客

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Book IV Unit 6 Old Father Time Becomes a Terror

时间老人成了可怕的老人

 

Richard Tomkins

 

1     Once upon a time, technology, we thought, would make our lives easier. Machines were expected to do our work for us, leaving us with ever-increasing quantities of time to waste away on idleness and pleasure.

      从前，我们以为技术发展会使我们的生活变得更安逸。那时我们觉得机器会替代我们工作，我们则有越来越多的时间休闲娱乐。

2    But instead of liberating us, technology has enslaved us. Innovations are occurring at a bewildering rate: as many now arrive in a year as once arrived in a millennium. And as each invention arrives, it eats further into our time.

      但技术发展没有把我们解放出来，而是使我们成为奴隶。新技术纷至沓来，令人目不暇接：一年涌现的技术创新相当于以前一千年。而每一项新发明问世，就进一步吞噬我们的光阴。

3    The motorcar, for example, promised unimaginable levels of personal mobility. But now, traffic in cities moves more slowly than it did in the days of the horse-drawn carriage, and we waste our lives stuck in traffic jams.

      比如，汽车曾使我们希望个人出行会方便得让人难以想象。可如今，城市车辆运行得比马车时代还要慢，我们因交通堵塞而困在车内，徒然浪费生命。

4    The aircraft promised new horizons, too. The trouble is, it delivered them. Its very existence created a demand for time-consuming journeys that we would never previously have dreamed of undertaking -- the transatlantic shopping expedition, for example, or the trip to a convention on the other side of the world.

      飞机也曾有可能为我们拓展新天地。问题是，飞机提供了新的天地。其存在本身产生了对耗时的长途旅行的需求，这种旅行，如越洋购物，或远道前往地球的另一半参加会议，以前我们是根本无法想象的。

5    In most cases, technology has not saved time, but enabled us to do more things. In the home, washing machines promised to free women from having to toil over the laundry. In reality, they encouraged us to change our clothes daily instead of weekly, creating seven times as much washing and ironing. Similarly, the weekly bath has been replaced by the daily shower, multiplying the hours spent on personal grooming.      

在大多数情况下，技术发展并未节省时间，而是使我们得以做更多的事。在家里，洗衣机可望使妇女摆脱繁重的洗衣劳作。但事实上，它们促使我们每天，而不是每星期换一次衣服，这就使熨洗衣物的工作量变成原来的7倍。同样地，每周一次的沐浴为每日一次的淋浴所代替，使得用于个人穿着打扮的时间大大增加。

6    Meanwhile, technology has not only allowed work to spread into our leisure time -- the laptop-on-the-beach syndrome -- but added the new burden of dealing with faxes, e-mails and voicemails. It has also provided us with the opportunity to spend hours fixing software glitches on our personal computers or filling our heads with useless information from the Internet.

      与此同时，技术发展不仅听任工作侵入我们的闲暇时间――带着便携式电脑去海滩综合症――而且添加了收发传真、电子邮件和语音邮件这些新的负担。技术发展还向我们提供机会，在个人电脑上一连几小时处理软件故障，或把因特网上那些无用的信息塞进自己的大脑。

7    Technology apart, the Internet points the way to a second reason why we feel so time-pressed: the information explosion.

      除去技术发展，因特网指出了我们为何感到时间如此紧迫的第二个原因：信息爆炸。

8    A couple of centuries ago, nearly all the world's accumulated learning could be contained in the heads of a few philosophers. Today, those heads could not hope to accommodate more than a tiny fraction of the information generated in a single day.

      几个世纪以前，人类积累的几乎所有知识都能装在若干哲人的大脑之中。如今，这些大脑休想容纳下一天中产生的新信息中的小小一部分。

9    News, facts and opinions pour in from every corner of the world. The television set offers 150 channels. There are millions of Internet sites. Magazines, books and CD-ROMs proliferate.

      各种消息、事实和见解从世界各个角落大量涌入。电视机能收到150个频道。因特网网址多达千百万。杂志、书籍和光盘只读存储器的数量也激增。

10    "In the whole world of scholarship, there were only a handful of scientific journals in the 18th century, and the publication of a book was an event," says Edward Wilson, honorary curator in entomology at Harvard University's museum of comparative zoology. "Now, I find myself subscribing to 60 or 70 journals or magazines just to keep me up with what amounts to a minute proportion of the expanding frontiers of scholarship."

      “在18世纪，整个国际学术界总共只有屈指可数的几家科学刊物，出版一本书是件了不起的大事，”哈佛大学比较动物学博物馆昆虫馆名誉馆长爱德华·威尔逊说。“如今，我本人就订阅了60或70种期刊杂志，以便自己跟上不断拓展的学术前沿中一个微小部分的发展动向。”

11    There is another reason for our increased time stress levels, too: rising prosperity. As ever-larger quantities of goods and services are produced, they have to be consumed. Driven on by advertising, we do our best to oblige: we buy more, travel more and play more, but we struggle to keep up. So we suffer from what Wilson calls discontent with super abundance -- the confusion of endless choice.

      我们产生日益加重的时间紧迫感还有一个原因：日渐繁荣富足。由于生产的物品与提供的服务越来越多，我们必须去消费。在广告的推动下，我们努力照办：我们多多购买多多旅游多多玩儿，但得尽力坚持下去。于是我们就深受威尔逊所谓的对极大富足不满之苦――即无休止的选择所造成的困惑。

12    Of course, not everyone is overstressed. "It's a convenient shorthand to say we're all time-starved, but we have to remember that it only applies to, say, half the population," says Michael Willmott, director of the Future Foundation, a London research company.

      当然，并非人人感到时间过度紧迫。“说我们都缺少时间只是随意讲讲，我们应该记住，这种说法大约只适用于一半人，”未来基金公司 -- 一家伦敦研究公司 -- 的经理迈克尔·威尔莫特说。

13    "You've got people retiring early, you've got the unemployed, you've got other people maybe only peripherally involved in the economy who don't have this situation at all. If you're unemployed, your problem is that you've got too much time, not too little."

      “有些人早早退休了，有些人失业了，有些人或许只与经济活动沾点边，根本不会有这种情况。如果失业了，那你的问题就是时间太多，而不是太少。”

14    Paul Edwards, chairman of the London-based Henley Centre forecasting group, points out that the feeling of pressures can also be exaggerated, or self-imposed. "Everyone talks about it so much that about 50 percent of unemployed or retired people will tell you they never have enough time to get things done," he says. "It's almost got to the point where there's stress envy. If you're not stressed, you're not succeeding. Everyone wants to have a little bit of this stress to show they're an important person."

      总部设在伦敦的亨利中心预测小组组长保罗·爱德华兹指出，压力感也可能被夸大，或者被强加于自身。“人人都大谈压力，以至于多达半数的失业者或退休人员都会跟你说，他们根本来不及把事情做完，”他说。“这几乎是到了羡慕压力的程度。没有感到有压力，就不是成功者。人人都想表现几分时间紧迫感，以显示自己的重要。”

15    There is another aspect to all of this too. Hour-by-hour logs kept by thousands of volunteers over the decades have shown that, in the U.K. , working hours have risen only slightly in the last 10 years, and in the U.S., they have actually fallen -- even for those in professional and executive jobs, where the perceptions of stress are highest.

      这一切还有另外一个方面。几十年来由数千名志愿者所作的钟点日志表明，英国在最近十年中工作时间只略微增加，而在美国，即使对工作压力最大的专业人士和管理人员而言，工作时间实际上减少了。

16    In the U.S., John Robinson, professor of sociology at the University of Maryland, and Geoffrey Godbey, professor of leisure studies at Penn State University found that, since the mid-1960s, the average American had gained five hours a week in free time -- that is, time left after working, sleeping, commuting, caring for children and doing the chores.

      在美国，马里兰大学社会学教授约翰·鲁宾逊和宾夕法尼亚州立大学研究闲暇问题的教授杰弗里·戈德比发现，自20世纪60年代中期以来，普通美国人每周增加了5小时空余时间，即工作、睡眠、乘车上下班、照料孩子和家务劳动之余的时间。

17    The gains, however, were unevenly distributed. The people who benefited the most were singles and empty-nesters. Those who gained the least -- less than an hour -- were working couples with pre-school children, perhaps reflecting the trend for parents to spend more time nurturing their offspring.

      但增加的时间分配得并不均匀。受惠最多的是未婚者和子女不在身边的人。得益最少的 -- 增加了不足1个小时 -- 是有学前子女的双职工夫妇，这或许反映了父母在抚养子女方面花费更多时间这一倾向。

18    There is, of course, a gender issue here, too. Advances in household appliances may have encouraged women to take paying jobs: but as we have already noted, technology did not end household chores. As a result, we see appalling inequalities in the distribution of free time between the sexes. According to the Henley Centre, working fathers in the U. K. average 48 hours of free time a week. Working mothers get 14.

      这里当然也存在着性别问题。家用器具的更新换代或许鼓励妇女去做有报酬的工作，但正如我们已经注意到的，技术发展并没有扫除家务杂活。其结果是，我们发现男女空余时间的分配惊人地不平等。据亨利中心的调查，在英国，有工作的父亲平均每周有48小时的空余时间。有工作的母亲只有14小时。

19    Inequalities apart, the perception of the time famine is widespread, and has provoked a variety of reactions. One is an attempt to gain the largest possible amount of satisfaction from the smallest possible investment of time. People today want fast food, sound bytes and instant gratification. And they become upset when time is wasted.

      除去不平等，缺乏时间的感觉也普遍存在，并引起了各种反应。反应之一是试图投入最少的时间以获取最大的满足。如今人们需要快餐，需要电台、电视台播放简短片断，还要即刻得到满足。时间一旦被浪费，人们就会很不高兴。

20    "People talk about quality time. They want perfect moments," says the Henley Centre's Edwards. "If you take your kids to a movie and McDonald's and it's not perfect, you've wasted an afternoon, and it's a sense that you've lost something precious. If you lose some money you can earn some more, but if you waste time you can never get it back."

      “人们谈论着质量时间。他们需要最佳时光，”亨利中心的爱德华兹说。“如果你带孩子去看电影或去麦当劳，但度过的时光并不甜美，你浪费了一个下午，感觉就像是你丢失了宝贵物品。钱丢失了还能挣回来，但时间浪费了就再也无法追回。”

21    People are also trying to buy time. Anything that helps streamline our lives is a growth market. One example is what Americans call concierge services -- domestic help, childcare, gardening and decorating. And on-line retailers are seeing big increases in sales -- though not, as yet, profits.

      人们还试图购买时间。任何能帮助我们提高生活效率的事物都有越做越大的市场。美国人所谓的家政服务 -- 做家务，带孩子，修剪花木，居家装饰 -- 即为一例。网上零售商在看着销售额大幅增长 -- 虽然利润尚未同样大幅增长。

22    A third reaction to time famine has been the growth of the work-life debate. You hear more about people taking early retirement or giving up high pressure jobs in favour of occupations with shorter working hours. And bodies such as Britain's National Work-Life Forum have sprung up, urging employers to end the long-hours culture among managers and to adopt family-friendly working policies.

      对时间匮乏的第三个反应是有关人的一生应该工作多少年的争论增多。你比过去更常听到人们谈论早早退休，谈论放弃压力大的工作去从事工作时间短的工作。诸如英国全国工作年限论坛这样的机构像雨后春笋般出现了，敦促雇主终止让管理人员长时间加班的做法，而采取能适应家庭生活的工作方式。

23    The trouble with all these reactions is that liberating time -- whether by making better use of it, buying it from others or reducing the amount spent at work -- is futile if the hours gained are immediately diverted to other purposes.

      所有这些反应的问题在于，把时间解放出来 -- 无论是靠更充分地利用时间，靠购买他人的时间，还是靠缩短工作时间 -- 是没有意义的，如果赢得的时间又即刻被用于其他目的。

24    As Godbey points out, the stress we feel arises not from a shortage of time, but from the surfeit of things we try to cram into it. "It's the kid in the candy store," he says. "There's just so many good things to do. The array of choices is stunning. Our free time is increasing, but not as fast as our sense of the necessary."

      正如戈德比所指出的，我们的紧张感并非源于时间短缺，而是因为我们试图在一个个时段中塞入过多的内容。“就像糖果店里的孩子，”他说，“有那么多美好的事情要做。选择之多，令人眼花缭乱。我们的空余时间在增加，但其速度跟不上我们心中日益增多的必须做的事。”

25    A more successful remedy may lie in understanding the problem rather than evading it.

      更有效的解决方式或许在于去理解这一问题，而不是回避这一问题。

26   Before the industrial revolution, people lived in small communities with limited communications. Within the confines of their village, they could reasonably expect to know everything that was to be known, see everything that was to be seen, and do everything that was to be done.

      工业革命前，人们居住在交通联系不方便的小社区里。在本村范围内，人们自然而然地期望了解该了解的一切，见到该见的一切，做该做的一切。

27    Today, being curious by nature, we are still trying to do the same. But the global village is a world of limitless possibilities, and we can never achieve our aim.

      如今，生性好奇的我们仍试图这么做。然而，地球村是一个有着无限可能的世界，我们永远无法实现自己的目标。

28    It is not more time we need: it is fewer desires. We need to switch off the cell-phone and leave the children to play by themselves. We need to buy less, read less and travel less. We need to set boundaries for ourselves, or be doomed to mounting despair.

      我们需要的不是更多的时间：是更少的欲望。我们定要关掉手机，让孩子们自己玩耍。我们定要少购物，少阅读，少出游。我们定要在有所为、有所不为方面给自己设定界限，不然则注定会越来越感到绝望。

 

  大家好，我叫亓官劼（qí guān jié ），在CSDN中记录学习的点滴历程，时光荏苒，未来可期，加油~博客地址为：亓官劼的博客

本文原创为亓官劼，请大家支持原创，部分平台一直在盗取博主的文章！！！

博主目前仅在CSDN中写博客，唯一博客更新的地址为：亓官劼的博客

Book IV Unit 7 Snapshots of New York’s Mood after 9/11

Corky Siemaszko

 

DAY OF TERROR

Originally published: 9/12/2001

 

The morning coffee was still cooling when our grandest illusion was shattered. Within minutes, one of New York's mightiest symbols was a smoldering mess and the nation's image of invincibility was made a lie.

As the World Trade Center crumpled and the streets filled with screams and scenes of unimaginable horror, choking smoke blotted out the sun and plunged lower Manhattan into darkness.

Those not entombed by the bomb-blasted buildings ran and ran —just as they did eight years earlier, when another terror attack shook this mighty symbol of America's power.

For the rest of the country, there was another shock to digest —a second kamikaze attack. This time on the Pentagon.

More horror. More chaos. More amazement that the mighty United States could be so vulnerable to terror.

But on the streets of lower Manhattan there was no time for finger-pointing. No time for talk of revenge. People were dying. Cops and firefighters were dying with them.

Commentators called the attack a second Pearl Harbor, until now our most tragic hour. Politicians denounced the likely culprits in Afghanistan. And before dusk, there were inaccurate reports that an angry America was raining revenge on Kabul.

One day we will think back on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, and remember in crystal detail what we were doing when the first plane crashed into the north tower at 8:45 a. m.

And we will be amazed that we didn't think it possible before.

 

THE DAY AFTER

Originally published: 9/13/2001

 

When the sun rose yesterday, someone joked that the city was missing its two front teeth. But there was nothing to laugh about in the aftermath of our generation's Pearl Harbor.

There was only wreckage and smoke and fire where the World Trade Center used to be. Thousands remained buried under tons of rubble.

A handful of people were plucked from the wreckage in lower Manhattan,  living reminders that miracles do happen.

But for those digging through the debris, every passing hour sapped their strength hand their hopes of finding more victims alive.

The rest of New York resembled a Third World capital after a particularly explosive coup.

Armed National Guardsmen in helmets and camouflage rumbled through Manhattan in convoys. The few people on the normally bustling streets watched them and only sometimes waved.

New Yorkers waited at newsstands for the morning papers to arrive while anxious relatives gathered at street side morgues holding pictures of the disappeared.

In Washington, where the kamikaze terrorists severely damaged the nerve center of American military power, politicians beat war drums as our allies pledged solidarity and registered their disgust.

"This was not an act of terror, " President Bush said. "This was an act of war. "

Investigators pointed fingers at the likely culprit in Afghanistan and began rounding up the suicide bombers' suspected accomplices. The faces of the fanatics began to emerge.

They had jolted America with their surprise attack. But now — as after Pearl Harbor more than half a century before —it was our turn.

And the world waited to see what America would do.

 

LOOKING BACK IN PAIN & HOPE

Originally published: 9/8/2002

 

Long before the Boeings brought down the towers, poet Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote "grief returns with the revolving year. ”So it is with New York.

The time it took the Earth to circle the sun was time enough to clear the wreckage, but not enough to fade the memory of what happened there.

It was time enough to bury the bodies that could be found, but not enough to truly mourn the thousands who perished.

It was time enough to plan memorials,but not enough to fill the gaping wound in lower Manhattan.

For what is a year but a thin sliver of history, a beat of a hummingbird's wing?

And yet, in the space of 12 months, the wounded city rose from its knees, angry America smote the Taliban and sent Osama Bin Laden into hiding.

A new generation of firefighters and cops tried to fill the shoes of those who were lost, a new generation of orphans faced a future uncertain.

New Yorkers talked tough and carried on, but with far less swagger and far less joy. They remained haunted by what they had lived through, what they had seen.

How could they not? Ground Zero is just a subway ride away. Everyone, it seems, knows someone who did not come home Sept.  11. Everyone, it seems, was touched by the tragedy.

There were indelible images that captured the carnage like flies in amber —the planes crashing, the towers on fire, the falling men and women frozen in flight as they leaped to their deaths.

Now the calendar commands us to revisit Sept. 11. Now the calendar commands us to remember the dead. Now the calendar commands us to pick at a scab that has just begun to heal.

But the calendar does not say how many more times the Earth has to revolve around the sun before it stops hurting.

 

ONE YEAR LATER

Originally published: 9/12/2002

 

On a day that broke as blue and beautiful as the morning a year ago when the planes toppled the towers, a brisk northwest wind kicked up the dust of Ground Zero.

It coated the red roses that children carried into The Pit.

It stung the eyes and clung to the tears of the broken hearted who came to say farewell.

It swirled like dervishes across the vast emptiness where the World Trade Center once stood.

Some of the mourners divined in the dust the ghosts of those they lost, and they opened their mouths and breathed it in.

Some of the mourners saw in the dust visions from that deadly day when the very ground was on fire and the powder and smoke caked the living and the dead.

Some of the mourners who never got a body to bury gathered handfuls of the brown dust and placed it in plastic bags to save and remember, to always remember.

We will not revisit Sept. 11 the same way again.

The ranks of the 24, 000 who followed the bagpipers and drummers down the ramp and into the emptiness yesterday will thin.

Fewer Americans will stop in their tracks at 8:46 a. m. and register the moment When the first hijacked plane crashed into the north tower. Fewer candles will be lit. Fewer flags will be waved. Fewer speeches will be made. Fewer songs will be sung. Fewer tears will be shed, at least publicly.

Instead, something new will fill the void where the towers stood. Something new will be built on the spot as a memorial to the 2, 801 who died. Something new will rise on the sacred 16 acres to spite the madmen who dared attack us.

Poet Jean de La Fontaine wrote, “On the wings of time grief flies away. ”

But the memory, like the dust, will linger.

恐怖的一天

出版:9/12/2001

早晨的咖啡还在凉的时候，我们最大的幻想破灭了。几分钟后，纽约最强大的象征之一变成了一团阴燃的灰烬，美国不可战胜的形象成了一个谎言。

随着世贸中心倒塌，街道上充斥着尖叫声和难以想象的恐怖场景，令人窒息的浓烟遮住了太阳，将曼哈顿下城笼罩在黑暗中。

那些没有被炸毁的建筑物掩埋的人跑啊跑，就像他们八年前那样，当时另一场恐怖袭击撼动了这个美国力量的强大象征。

对这个国家的其他地方来说，还有另一个打击需要消化——第二次自杀式袭击。这次是在五角大楼。

更恐怖。更多的混乱。更令人惊讶的是，强大的美国竟然如此容易受到恐怖袭击。

但在曼哈顿下城的街道上，没有时间相互指责。没有时间谈论复仇。人死亡。警察和消防队员也在与他们同归于尽。

评论员称这次袭击是第二个珍珠港，直到现在，这是我们最悲惨的时刻。政客们谴责了在阿富汗可能的罪犯。黄昏前，有不准确的报道称，愤怒的美国正在对喀布尔进行报复。

总有一天，我们会回想起2001年9月11日的早晨，并清晰地记得当第一架飞机在上午8点45分撞向北塔时，我们在做什么。

我们会惊讶地发现，以前我们认为这是不可能的。

后的第二天

出版:9/13/2001

昨天太阳升起的时候，有人开玩笑说这个城市缺了两颗门牙。但在我们这代人经历了珍珠港事件之后，没有什么值得嘲笑的。

世贸中心曾经所在的地方现在只剩下残骸、浓烟和大火。成千上万的人仍然被埋在成吨的瓦砾下。

一些人从曼哈顿下城的废墟中被救了出来，他们的生活提醒我们，奇迹是会发生的。

但对于那些在废墟中挖掘的人来说，时间一分一秒地过去，他们失去了力量，失去了找到更多幸存者的希望。

在一场特别具有爆炸性的政变后，纽约的其它地方就像第三世界的首都。

戴着头盔和迷彩服的武装国民警卫队在车队中轰隆隆地穿过曼哈顿。平时熙熙攘攘的街道上只有几个人看着他们，有时也只是挥手致意。

纽约人在报刊亭等待晨报的到来，焦急的亲属们聚集在路边的停尸房，手里拿着失踪者的照片。

在华盛顿，“敢死队”(kamikaze)恐怖分子严重破坏了美国军事力量的神经中枢，政客们敲起战鼓，我们的盟友承诺团结一致，并表达了他们的厌恶。

布什总统说:“这不是一起恐怖行动。“这是一种战争行为。”

调查人员指出了在阿富汗可能的罪犯，并开始围捕自杀式炸弹袭击者的同伙。狂热分子的面孔开始出现了。

他们的突袭震惊了美国。但现在，就像半个多世纪前的珍珠港事件一样，轮到我们了。

全世界都在等着看美国会怎么做。

回首痛苦与希望

出版:9/8/2002

早在波音公司炸毁双子塔之前，诗人珀西·比希·雪莱(Percy Bysshe Shelley)就写过《旋转的一年带来悲伤》(grief returns with the year)。纽约也是如此。

地球绕太阳一周的时间足以清理残骸，但还不足以让人忘记那里发生的事情。

我们有足够的时间来埋葬所能找到的尸体，但却没有足够的时间来真正哀悼数以千计的遇难者。

我们有足够的时间来设计纪念堂，但还不足以填补曼哈顿下城的巨大创伤。

一年除了是历史的一小段，是蜂鸟翅膀的一拍，还能是什么呢?

然而，在12个月的时间里，这座受伤的城市从崩溃中站了起来，愤怒的美国打击了塔利班，并将奥萨马•本•拉登(Osama Bin Laden)送进了藏身处。

新一代的消防员和警察试图填补那些失去亲人的人，新一代的孤儿面临着不确定的未来。

纽约人说话强硬，但仍在继续，但他们的狂妄自大和快乐却少得多。他们仍然被他们所经历的、所看到的事情所困扰。

他们怎么可能不知道呢?从世贸中心遗址乘地铁即可到达。似乎每个人都认识9·11事件中没有回家的人。似乎每个人都被这场悲剧感动了。

那些不可磨灭的画面捕捉到了大屠杀的场景，就像琥珀中的苍蝇——飞机坠毁，双子塔着火，倒下的男男女女在跳向死亡的过程中被冻住了。

现在，日历命令我们重新审视9月11日。现在日历命令我们记住死者。现在，日历命令我们挑出刚刚开始愈合的痂。

但是日历上并没有说地球要绕太阳转多少次才能停止伤害。

一年之后

出版:9/12/2002

那天，天空湛蓝而美丽，就像一年前的那个早晨，飞机撞毁了世贸双塔。一阵凛冽的西北风扬起了归零地的尘土。

它包裹着孩子们带到坑里的红玫瑰。

它刺痛了前来告别的伤心人的眼睛，粘住了他们的眼泪。

它像托钵僧一样在曾经矗立着世贸中心的那片空旷的土地上盘旋。

一些哀悼者在尘土中猜测他们失去的人的鬼魂，他们张开嘴，把它吸了进去。

有些吊丧的人在尘土中看见了那天的异象，那是致命的日子，地上着了火，火药和烟雾把活人和死人都裹住了。

一些没有尸体埋葬的哀悼者收集了一把棕色的灰尘，把它放在塑料袋里保存和记忆，永远记住。

我们不会再以同样的方式回顾9·11事件。

昨天跟随风笛手和鼓手走下斜坡，进入空旷地带的24000人将会减少。

很少有美国人会在早上8点46分停下来，记录下第一架被劫持的飞机撞向北塔的那一刻。更少的蜡烛将被点燃，更少的旗帜将被挥舞。发言将会减少。将会有更少的歌曲被演唱。至少在公开场合，人们的眼泪会少一些。

相反，一些新的东西将填补双塔所在的空白。为了纪念2801位逝去的人，一些新的东西将会被建造在这里。在这神圣的16英亩土地上，将会出现新的东西来报复那些敢于攻击我们的疯子。

诗人让·德·拉封丹写道:“悲伤乘着时间的翅膀飞走了。””

但是记忆，就像灰尘一样，会萦绕不去。

 

Book IV Unit 8 In the Jungle

在丛林中

Annie Dillard

 

1     Like any out-of-the-way place, the Napo River in the Ecuadorian jungle seems real enough when you are there, even central. Out of the way of what? I was sitting on a stump at the edge of a bankside palm-thatch village, in the middle of the night, on the headwaters of the Amazon. Out of the way of human life, tenderness, or the glance of heaven?

如同所有僻远之地，当你身临其境时，厄瓜多尔丛林深处的纳波河就显得那么真实，甚至有中心要地的感觉。那么僻远之地远离什么呢？夜半时分，在亚马逊河的源头，我坐在一个树墩上，身后是傍水的棕榈叶作屋顶的小村落。远离人类活动，远离脉脉温情。或者说远离天堂的扫视？

2    A nightjar in deep-leaved shadow called three long notes, and hushed. The men with me talked softly: three North Americans, four Ecuadorians who were showing us the jungle. We were holding cool drinks and idly watching a hand-sized tarantula seize moths that came to the lone bulb on the generator shed beside us.

一只欧夜鹰在密密的树叶间发出三声长啼，旋即静默无声。和我一起的那些男人轻声交谈着：3个北美人，4个为我们在丛林中带路的厄瓜多尔人。我们手里拿着清凉的饮料，悠闲地看着一只有手那么大小的狼蛛捕捉纷纷扑向我们身旁发电机棚屋上一个灯泡的飞虫。

3    It was February, the middle of summer. Green fireflies spattered lights across the air and illumined for seconds, now here, now there, the pale trunks of enormous, solitary trees. Beneath us the brown Napo River was rising, in all silence; it coiled up the sandy bank and tangled its foam in vines that trailed from the forest and roots that looped the shore.

时值2月，正当仲夏。绿莹莹的萤火虫在空中闪出光亮，一会儿这里照亮一下，一会儿那里照亮一下幽木巨树的暗淡的树干。在我们下方，褐黄色的纳波河水正在涨潮。万籁俱寂：惟见河水沿着沙岸蜿蜒流过，水沫裹挟在蔓生在森林里的藤蔓间以及盘绕岸边的树根上。

4    Each breath of night smelled sweet. Each star in Orion seemed to tremble and stir with my breath. All at once, in the thatch house across the clearing behind us came the sound of a recorder, playing a tune that twined over the village clearing, muted our talk on the bankside, and wandered over the river, dissolving downstream.

夜晚吸入的每口气都沁人心脾。猎户星座里的每一颗星星似乎都因了我的呼吸而颤动。突然，我们身后空地旁的茅屋里，传出了录音机的声音，一首乐曲在村子空地之上缭绕，减弱了我们在河畔谈话的声音，然后又传至河面，随流飘去。

5    This will do, I thought. This will do, for a weekend, or a season, or a home.      

人生遇此情景足矣，我暗想。在此度过周末足以，在此小住数月足以，在此安家足以。

6    Later that night I loosed my hair from its braids and combed it smooth -- not for myself, but so the village girls could play with it in the morning.

      夜半时分，我散开辫子，把头发梳理得平平整整--不是为我自己，而是为了村里那些姑娘早上可以玩我的头发。

7    We had disembarked at the village that afternoon, and I had slumped on some shaded steps, wishing I knew some Spanish or some Quechua so I could speak with the ring of little girls who were alternately staring at me and smiling at their toes. I spoke anyway, and fooled with my hair, which they were obviously dying to get their hands on, and laughed, and soon they were all braiding my hair, all five of them, all fifty fingers, all my hair, even my bangs. And then they took it apart and did it again, laughing, and teaching me Spanish nouns, and meeting my eyes and each other's with open delight, while their small brothers in blue jeans climbed down from the trees and began kicking a volleyball around with one of the North American men.

我们是那天下午在这个小村上岸的，我垂着头坐在树阴下的踏级上，真希望自己会说几句西班牙语或盖丘亚语，好跟围成一圈的小女孩说说话，她们一会儿看看我，一会儿又低头看着自己的脚趾窃笑。我还是开口了，笑着抚弄自己的头发，她们显然也都非常想碰碰我的头发。没过一会儿，她们就给我编辫子了，她们5个人，50个手指，我是一头辫子，连留海也编成了辫子。她们拆了编，编了拆，一边笑一边教我西班牙语单词，望望我，又相互对望，个个喜形于色，她们那些穿着牛仔服的小弟弟们则纷纷下得树来，跟一个北美人踢排球玩耍。

8    Now, as I combed my hair in the little tent, another of the men, a free-lance writer from Manhattan, was talking quietly. He was telling us the tale of his life, describing his work in Hollywood, his apartment in Manhattan, his house in Paris.... "It makes me wonder," he said, "what I'm doing in a tent under a tree in the village of Pompeya, on the Napo River, in the jungle of Ecuador." After a pause he added, "It makes me wonder why I'm going back."

此刻，我在低矮的帐篷里梳理着头发，另一个北美人，一位来自曼哈顿的自由作家，正在轻声说话。他在向我们讲述他人生的故事，讲述他在好莱坞的工作、在曼哈顿的公寓、在巴黎的家…… “我不由纳闷，”他说，“在厄瓜多尔的丛林里，在纳波河上，在蓬帕雅小村，在树下的帐篷里，自己在干什么。”他顿了顿，接着说：“我不由寻思，自己为什么要回去。”

9    The point of going somewhere like the Napo River in Ecuador is not to see the most spectacular anything. It is simply to see what is there. We are here on the planet only once, and might as well get a feel for the place. We might as well get a feel for the fringes and hollows in which life is lived, for the Amazon basin, which covers half a continent, and for the life that -- there, like anywhere else -- is always and necessarily lived in detail: on the tributaries, in the riverside villages, sucking this particular white-fleshed guava in this particular pattern of shade.

去厄瓜多尔纳波河这种地方不是为了观赏什么世界奇观，而只是去看一看那里有些什么。人生在世，惟有一次，我们不妨去感受一下那个地方。我们不妨去感受一下有生命生活其间的远方水乡山谷，去感受覆盖了半个大陆的亚马逊河流域，去感受那样一种生活――在那里，一如在别的地方――那种必定总是琐碎的生活：在各条支流上，在临水的村落里，在有着独特形状的阴凉处吮吸着有白色浆果的独特的番石榴。

10    What is there is interesting. The Napo River itself is wide and brown, opaque, and smeared with floating foam and logs and branches from the jungle. Parrots in flocks dart in and out of the light. Under the water in the river, unseen, are anacondas -- which are reputed to take a few village toddlers every year -- and water boas, crocodiles, and sweet-meated fish.

那里的一切都趣味盎然。纳波河河面宽阔，河水混浊，呈褐黄色，浮沫以及丛林里来的木段和树枝翻浮其上。成群的鹦鹉忽而飞进树荫里，忽而飞入阳光里。水下潜伏着南美蟒蛇――据说每年都要吞吃几名村童――还有水蟒、鳄鱼，以及肉质鲜美的鱼类。

11    Low water bares gray strips of sandbar on which the natives build tiny palm-thatch shelters for overnight fishing trips. You see these extraordinarily clean people (who bathe twice a day in the river, and whose straight black hair is always freshly washed) paddling down the river in dugout canoes, hugging the banks.

水浅的地方露出灰茫茫的狭长沙洲，土著人在沙洲上为过夜的渔夫搭建了小小的棕榈茅舍。你能见到这些清洁得出奇的人（他们在河里一天沐浴两次，满头直挺的黑发更是刚刚洗过）在独木舟里紧贴着河岸荡桨。

12    Some of the Indians of this region, earlier in the century, used to sleep naked in hammocks. The nights are cold. Gordon MacCreach, an American explorer in these Amazon tributaries, reported that he was startled to hear the Indians get up at three in the morning. He was even more startled, night after night, to hear them walk down to the river slowly, half asleep, and bathe in the water. Only later did he learn what they were doing: they were getting warm. The cold woke them; they warmed their skins in the river, which was always ninety degrees; then they returned to their hammocks and slept through the rest of the night.

在本世纪早期，这一地区的一些印第安人常常赤身睡在吊床里。夜晚颇凉。勘测亚马逊河支流的美国探险家戈登·麦克里奇曾记述说，他凌晨3点就听见印第安人起身，深感愕然。更令他惊奇的是，夜复一夜，他都听见他们半睡半醒地缓步走向河边，趟到河里洗起澡来。后来他才弄明白他们是在干什么：他们在取暖。凉意把他们冻醒，他们便到河里暖暖身子，因为河水保持90（华氏）度不变；随后他们再回到吊床上，睡到天亮。

13    When you are inside the jungle, away from the river, the trees vault out of sight. Butterflies, bright blue, striped, or clear-winged, thread the jungle paths at eye level. And at your feet is a swath of ants bearing triangular bits of green leaf. The ants with their leaves look like a wide fleet of sailing dinghies -- but they don't quit. In either direction they wobble over the jungle floor as far as the eye can see.

当你离开大河，深入丛林，满眼树木高耸入云。一眼望去，成群的蝴蝶穿过丛林小径，有宝蓝的，有条纹的，有纯色翅膀的。在脚下，则有一长列蚂蚁背负着三角形的绿叶碎片。负叶爬行的蚂蚁就像一支规模庞大、扬帆行驶的船队――只是它们不会停歇。无论什么方向，都能看到它们在丛林的地面上摇摇摆摆地爬行。

14    Long lakes shine in the jungle. We traveled one of these in dugout canoes, canoes paddled with machete-hewn oars, or poled in the shallows with bamboo. Our part-Indian guide had cleared the path to the lake the day before; when we walked the path we saw where he had impaled the lopped head of a boa, open-mouthed, on a pointed stick by the canoes, for decoration.

丛林中狭长的湖泊上波光闪闪。我们荡舟其上，划着用大砍刀砍削而成的木桨，在浅水处则以竹当篙。有着一半印第安血统的向导前一天已经辟出了通往湖泊的小路；我们在小路上行走时，看见他砍下作为装饰的蟒蛇头，张开大口，钉在独木舟边尖头枝条上。

15    This lake was wonderful. Herons plodded the shores, kingfishers and cuckoos clattered from sunlight to shade, great turkeylike birds fussed in dead branches, and hawks hung overhead. There was all the time in the world. A turtle slid into the water. The boy in the bow of my canoe slapped stones at birds with a simple sling, a rubber thong and leather pad. He aimed brilliantly at moving targets, always, and always missed; the birds were out of range. He stuffed his sling back in his shirt. I looked around.

湖泊奇妙无比。苍鹭在岸边缓缓地迈着步子，翠鸟和杜鹃欢叫着从阳光里飞入树荫，火鸡模样的大鸟在枯枝间忙碌，鹰在头上盘旋。我们毋庸为时间担忧，可以从容地欣赏周围的一切。一只乌龟滑入水中。我乘坐的独木舟船头坐着个男孩，他用简陋的弹弓――橡皮弹架和皮索――发射石弹击打飞鸟。他摆出漂亮的架势瞄准飞鸟，却一次又一次地偏离目标；鸟总是飞出他的射程。他把弹弓塞回进衬衣内。我移开目光。

16    The lake and river waters are as opaque as rainforest leaves; they are veils, blinds, painted screens. You see things only by their effects. I saw the shoreline water heave above a thrashing paichi, an enormous black fish of these waters; one had been caught the previous week weighing 430 pounds. Piranha fish live in the lakes, and electric eels. I dangled my fingers in the water, figuring it would be worth it.

湖水与河水都如热带雨林中的树叶那样乳浊；那水是面纱，是窗帘，是画屏。你只能从表象看事物。我看到近岸的河水在起伏，上面翻腾着一条巨滑舌鱼，那是这一带水域出产的一种奇大的黑鱼；上一个星期捕获一条，重达430磅。湖里有水虎鱼，还有电鳗。我用手指在水里划着，心想即使被鱼咬一口也值得。

17    We would eat chicken that night in the village, together with rice, onions and heaps of fruit. The sun would ring down, pulling darkness after it like a curtain. Twilight is short, and the unseen birds of twilight wistful, catching the heart. The two nuns in their dazzling white habits -- the beautiful-boned young nun and the warm-faced old -- would glide to the open cane-and-thatch schoolroom in darkness, and start the children singing. The children would sing in piping Spanish, high-pitched and pure; they would sing "Nearer My God to Thee" in Quechua, very fast. As the children became excited by their own singing, they left their log benches and swarmed around the nuns, hopping, smiling at us, everyone smiling, the nuns' faces bursting in their cowls, and the clear-voiced children still singing, and the palm-leafed roofing stirred.

那天夜晚在小村里，我们将吃鸡肉，还有米饭、洋葱和一大堆水果。夕阳会西下，像落幕似地把夜暮降下。黄昏短暂，暮色中，看不见的鸟儿在伤感似地啼鸣，声声动人。两位修女，身穿耀眼的白色道服 -- 年轻的修女身材姣好，年长的那位慈眉善目 -- 会在夜色中悄然来到开着门的用藤条茅草搭建的教室里，让孩子们唱歌。孩子们会用西班牙语放声歌唱，歌声又高又纯；他们会用盖丘亚语唱“上帝离你更近”，唱得非常快。孩子们唱着唱着兴奋起来，纷纷从木凳上站起，簇拥在两位修女身旁，又是跳，又是冲着我们笑。人人都在欢笑，穿戴头巾的修女满脸欢笑，声音清脆的孩子们还在歌唱，棕榈叶铺的屋顶也在颤动。

18    The Napo River: it is not out of the way. It is in the way, catching sunlight the way a cup catches poured water; it is a bowl of sweet air, a basin of greenness, and of grace, and, it would seem, of peace.

纳波河：那不是荒僻的地方。那是个有人烟的地域，像杯子盛载往里倒的水那样，纳波河接住照射下来的阳光；那是个充满清新空气的低洼地区，一片翠绿的盆地，环境优美的盆地，看来还是个平静的盆地。

 

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